Stainless Steel Memories

Back in pre-liberalisation India, the middle class’ love affair with the modern took wing with stainless steel. Growing up, I remember the passion it generated as women collected one utensil after another, sometimes on a special occasion, often through gifts, by exchanging old clothes for new utensils and always on dhanteras. There was something about stainless steel that mirrored our obsession with gold, so fervid and uninhibited was the desire for it.

Every utensil bought was the triumphant product of a heroic campaign waged over days involving several shops and some very hard bargaining. Every utensil came engraved with memory- who bought it, when and for what reason was etched on its side in fine print for posterity. Material progress in a household was measured one utensil at a time. It was the most accessible unit of accretion; durables were bought once in a few years while utensils, even stainless steel ones could be afforded more regularly. One could never go wrong with stainless steel; in a world otherwise where all that was material was suspect, where the fabric we bought shrunk inexplicably to half, and the milk we bought was half water, we could trust stainless steel to be all that it promised. It was an assurance of permanence, a rare guarantee that the material too could be credible.

Most fascinatingly, stainless steel managed to meet deeply traditional needs by being incontrovertibly modern. It was seen as pure and indestructible, the two virtues that give it pride of place in a kitchen. And yet, unlike gold, which is interwoven into custom and the ritual role of which is well established, stainless steel had no past in India. Dubbed as ‘ever-silver’ in the early phases of its introduction, it was clearly a modern substance, glinting with metallic hardness. It replaced brass and strode over aluminum; the former being too cumbersome as time started being a scarce commodity and the latter too flimsy. Aluminum re-inforced all fears about modernity by demonstrating a quick descent from being sparklingly light when new to being yellowed, battered and tinny when older. Stainless steel dulled gracefully with age while aluminum carried the yellow pallor of death.

Perhaps the power of stainless steel came from its magical combination of heft, clunk and glint. It felt re-assuringly substantial, sounded resoundingly but firmly metallic and shone with a radiant bliss that seemed to come from within. The stainless steel shine was not an imposition but a sign of the essential goodness of its internal properties. It was akin to a face radiating health – to an extent to which we could see ourselves in it. The combination of the utilitarian with the aesthetic, where the latter could not merely be read as an accomplice of the former but as its result, helped stainless steel reach its pre-eminent position.

In doing so, it created a kind of modernity that middle class India could comfortably aspire to. It was a sign that worked in both directions- outward to the world signifying prosperous modernity and inwards to the family connoting rooted adhesion. The family ate in stainless steel thalis and used stainless steel tumblers; guests were served in glass and those regarded as help in utensils made of ‘lesser’ substances- maybe plastic or aluminum.

As middle class India has found need signs of modernity, stainless steel while still continuing as the backbone of the kitchen is no longer as potent as a sign as it used to be. To be sure it has found new sites of expression- we see it more in the living rooms as an aesthetic object than we did in the past, but middle class India doesn’t need it quite as much. It is perhaps the first sign of modernity as a cycle with what was yesterday’s modernity has become today’s tradition.

Even the kitchen now sees much more plastic, ‘non-stick’ ware, bone china and glass. But for those who grew up in pre-reform India, there is something about stainless steel and the meaning it provided that will never lose luster. It might dull a bit, but the shine still remains. I have a steel tumbler in front of me where the engraving tells me that it was gifted in 1952 by a relative I cannot place now. Try that with a glass sometime.

(This is a version of an article that has appeared previously in the Times of India)